Although you can enjoy much of this website without javascript, we highly recommend that you enable it
in order to experience all available features.

Cookies on What Doctors Don't Tell You

We set cookies so you can manage your account and navigate the site, and to remember your cookie preferences so that you don't keep getting this message. To accept cookies, just keep browsing,
otherwise use the links on the right to adjust your cookie settings or find out more.

New guidelines now define half of all adults as having dangerously high blood pressure, requiring drugs for the rest of their lives. Lynne McTaggart and Bryan Hubbard offer alternatives to your doctor's prescription

Alzheimer's probably not caused by brain plaques, says new research chief

About the author:&nbsp

Medicine has got it wrong about Alzheimer's disease for the past 40 years, the UK's new head of dementia research says. It's far more complex a disease than the idea it's solely caused by plaques in the brain.

It's as likely to be caused by inflammation—a process that's increasingly being recognised as a cause of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers—says Bart De Strooper, the head of the recently-established Dementia Research Institute.

He published a research paper last year that questioned the standard view that Alzheimer's is caused by two 'deformed' proteins in the brain, amyloid and tau. Drugs research has centred on eliminating the two proteins, but existing drugs have had limited success in countering the disease, and hopes of a cure were dashed last year when two potential block-buster drugs—Merck's verubecestat and Eli Lilly's solanezumab—both failed at the test stage.

He argues that the "amyloid hypothesis", as it's known, is far too simplistic, and that many other factors are at play, including the possibility that Alzheimer's and dementia could be the result of inflammation.